Trained in Lombardy, Caravaggio moved to Rome around 1592, and he initially made his reputation with a number of realistic paintings of half-length figures, such as this one. This canvas was painted for his first great patron, Cardinal Francesco del Monte. Although it was described by contemporaries as "una musica" (a music piece), it is an allegory of music. Cupid is shown at left. The costumes have a vaguely classical look and Caravaggio included his self-portrait in the second boy from the right.

The Artist: Trained in Milan and active in Rome (1592–1606), Naples (1606–7; 1609–10), Malta (1607–8), and Sicily (1608–9), Caravaggio was one of the most revolutionary figures of European art. His practice of painting directly from posed models violated the idealizing premise of Renaissance theory and promoted a new relationship between painting and viewer by breaking down the conventions that maintained painting as a plausible fiction rather than an extension of everyday experience. Although his career spans little more than fifteen years, the transformation from his earliest works, in which a realist impulse is tempered by delicacy of description, and his late, dark style—at once dramatic in effect and suggestive of the tragic side of life—is immense. Like many young artists arriving in Rome, he worked for other artists and then for a dealer before being "discovered" by a cardinal—Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1626), who gave him quarters in his palace and promoted his career. Following the clamorous success of his first public commission for three canvases in San Luigi dei Francesi (1599–1600), Caravaggio's work came to be seen in contrast to the idealist style promoted by Annibale Carracci and his pupils (see 1971.155), and the resulting dialectical relationship certainly encouraged the development of the opposing tendencies in their art. In the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo (1600–1601), the work of both was intentionally juxtaposed. Caravaggio's proclivity towards violence and his inability to get on with his colleagues may also have played a part and these character flaws have loomed large in the biographical interpretation of his paintings. When, of necessity, he fled Rome for Naples in 1606, following a fight after a game of tennis, he was the most famous painter in Italy, and there followed a succession of masterpieces painted with astonishing rapidity and mastery in a dark and expressive style without precedent in European art. The most commanding of these works is an enormous canvas showing the decollation of Saint John the Baptist for the cathedral of Valletta in Malta (1608), where the artist sought to become a knight—and thus to get a papal pardon for his crime in Rome—but instead was thrown in prison following an altercation. He escaped to Sicily and, upon his return to Naples following work in Messina, Syracuse, and Palermo, he was attacked and badly scarred. His death of fever on the coast near Porto Ercole was seized upon by his early biographers as a kind of divine judgment on his character and has proved no less irresistible to modern writers: no other Old Master has been the subject of so many novelistic biographies. The Metropolitan owns two works, one from the beginning and the other from the end of his career, making it possible to appreciate the varied character of his contribution to western art.

The Picture: According to Giovanni Baglione (1642), a contemporary painter-author and a primary biographical source, Caravaggio painted "a concert, with some youths portrayed from nature very well" immediately after joining the household of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1626), his first great patron, in about 1595. The Metropolitan's picture, which was discovered only in 1952 (Mahon 1952), is now universally identified with this picture. Del Monte's collection also included two other early pictures by Caravaggio, The Fortune Teller (Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome) and The Cardsharps (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), and it seems clear that his interest in Caravaggio's work stemmed from its combination of a naturalistic style and a moralizing theme. Del Monte went on to commission not only The Musicians—perhaps the first work Caravaggio painted expressly for him—but also, a few years later, a personalized variant of a celebrated picture of a lute player that the artist had painted for Vincenzo Giustiniani (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). In that work the singer-lutenist, possibly a male soprano (castrato) living in Del Monte’s palace (see Franca Trinchieri Camiz, "The Castrato Singer: From Informal to Formal Portraiture," Artibus et Historiae, no. 18 (1988), pp. 171–86; and Christiansen 1990 and Macioce 2012), wears a classicizing pastoral costume—as though for a performance. The Musicians is envisaged not as a depiction of a contemporary concert, but an allegory of Music and Love (Love being symbolized by the cupid gathering grapes). Scholars agree that the cornetto player is a self-portrait, and it is possible that the lutenist is also a specific individual in Del Monte's household. Caravaggio's manner of working from life reflects his training in Lombardy. In conceiving this allegory, he has not followed the conventional guidelines of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia—the most commonly used iconographic handbook, first published in Rome in 1593 with a dedication to Del Monte and again, with illustrations, in 1603. (Ripa’s text served as the basis of Laurent de la Hyre’s Allegory of Music, 50.189.) Rather than a single, idealized female figure as Music, Caravaggio has conceived the allegory in a style that remains intentionally and provocatively ambivalent. In a marginal note in his copy of Baglione's Vite, Bellori (1642–90) remarked on the flatness of the composition of The Musicians, which resulted from Caravaggio's piecemeal construction of the work from individually posed models. His concession to the conventional terms of allegory is the winged cupid with grapes. Ripa recommends the inclusion of wine, "since music was created to make spirits light" (Il vino si pone, perche la musica fù ritrovata per tener gli animi allegri come fà il vino . . . ; 1611 ed., pp. 367–68).

The early fame of the picture can be gleaned from a series of letters that run from December 27, 1614, through March 13, 1615, from which we learn that the future papal doctor and avid art amateur and treatise writer, Giulio Mancini, had arranged to have copies made of three works by Caravaggio belonging to Cardinal Del Monte: The Fortune Teller, The Cardsharps, and The Musicians (see Maccherini 1997). He paid a professional copyist 15 scudi, the intended buyer being Agostino Chigi. The copy of the Musicians was finished by March 13, 1615, and was sent on to Siena on June 26, since Chigi had decided against buying it. What relation that copy has to do with one that has come down to us (see Additional Images) is uncertain, though the fact that that copy introduced a number of changes would have been unlikely to satisfy so demanding a connoisseur as Mancini.

The early history of the picture following Cardinal Del Monte’s death can now be reconstructed with some precision. On May 8, 1628, it was sold in a single lot together with a painting of a carafe of flowers by Caravaggio—a work that has disappeared but was much admired—and a music piece by Bernardino Licinio. Payment was made five days later by Monsignor Prospero Fagnani, who was almost certainly acting on behalf of Cardinal Antonio Barberini (see Lorizzo 2006). It must be the work by Caravaggio that, according to an avviso of July 8, 1634, Cardinal Antonio had "purchased from the Vigna Ludovisi" and gave to Charles I de Blanchefort (1578–1638), Maréchal de Créquy, who was the French ambassador in Rome, together with a work by Lanfranco (erroneously stated to have been purchased from the "Vigna" as well, whereas we know that it was commissioned by the Barberini; see Boyer and Volf 1988). The Vigna Ludovisi refers to Del Monte's casino near the Porta Pinciana, which he sold to Cardinal Ludovisi in 1621. The Musicians then appears in a 1638 posthumous inventory of Créquy's collection and was subsequently owned by Cardinal Richelieu and by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon (Boyer and Volf 1988). A yellow inscription (in capitals) with Caravaggio's name, formerly visible in the lower left corner (but now painted over), is similar to that on another painting that belonged to Créquy, the Supper at Emmaus by Veronese in the Louvre (information kindly furnished by Lizzie Boubli). Créquy's interest in Caravaggio's work is demonstrated by his unsuccessful attempt to purchase the Amor vincit omnia (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) from Vincenzo Giustiniani (Michael Wiemers, "Caravaggios 'Amore Vincitore' im Urteil eines Romfahrers um 1650," Pantheon 44 (1986), pp. 59–61).

The Duchesse d'Aiguillon's 1675 inventory notes that the canvas had been glued to a wooden support, which may have contributed to the poor condition of the painting today. Even the better-preserved passages, such as the head of the lutenist and the still life, have lost much of their subtlety, and the lute is scarcely more than a shape: the strings have been obliterated and the shadows cast by the right hand of the player are only smudges. The violin and upturned page of music have been reconstructed on the basis of the later copy referred to above; none of the musical scores are legible. However, as a result of this drastically compromised state, it is possible to appreciate the manner in which Caravaggio reworked passages to adapt an initially more prosaic image into an elegant and more abstracted allegorical statement. The matter is made even clearer by the X-ray (see Additional Images). The lutenist's shirt and sash, for example, were revised with more rhythmically disposed drapery. His right arm was painted first and the red mantle over it, enhancing the overall design and further distancing the figure from the everyday. In a real sense, the picture was an experiment in a kind of painting that placed new demands on Caravaggio, and the lessons derived from it provided the basis for some of his most poetic works, including the two Lute Players (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; and private collection).

In the past, a biographical or homoerotic interpretation was often attached to this picture. The compellingly sensual quality of the image should not be minimized—particularly the watery eyes of the lute player whose gaze engages the viewer—but it is doubtful that the picture was intended to convey an explicitly sexual meaning. Caravaggio's bisexuality can be established with some certainty (Wiemers 1986); Del Monte's sexual character is not known, and what bearing, if any, it had on this picture must be based on conjecture. Recent scholarship has more justly laid importance on the kinds of musical performances he sponsored, dominated by the male soprano voice (for a review, see Macioce 2012).

Athens. National Gallery Alexandros Soutzos Museum. "From El Greco to Cézanne: Masterpieces of European Painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," December 13, 1992–April 11, 1993, no. 6.

Denis Mahon. "Addenda to Caravaggio." Burlington Magazine 94 (January 1952), pp. 3–4, 7–10, 19, figs. 1, 2 (overall and detail), reports its discovery by David Carritt in an English private collection, and identifies it with the "musica" by Caravaggio mentioned by Baglione [see Ref. 1642] and Bellori [see Ref. 1672] in Cardinal del Monte's collection; notes that it has been cut down slightly and that the inscription, dating from not later than the eighteenth century, may transfer information from the back of the canvas; describes the condition and believes that Caravaggio abandoned the wings on the figure at the far left at an early stage of the painting; dates it 1594–95 and discusses it in the context of other works from Caravaggio's early period.

Denis Mahon. "An Addition to Caravaggio's Early Period." Paragone 3 (January 1952), pp. 20–31, pls. 14–17 (overall and details), notes that it has been relined at least twice, and adds that the dimensions are very close to those of the Lute Player in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, also painted for Cardinal del Monte; comments on the influence of Moretto and Savoldo.

Roberto Longhi. Il Caravaggio. Milan, 1952, p. 19, fig. 1 and ill. p. 9 (detail), describes it as unrealistic and expressing "insolente allegorismo pagano"; believes that it precedes Caravaggio's association with Del Monte, and that the "musica" described by Baglione [see Ref. 1642], which may have been a pendant to the Cardsharps (now Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), would have had figures dressed in contemporary costumes.

D. Graham Burns. "Letters to the Editor: That £50,000 Picture." Whitehaven News (January 31, 1952), p. ?, discusses the painting's provenance from the time it was acquired by his father, David Burns, during the 1920s.

"Caravaggio's 'Una Musica'." Times (January 29, 1952), p. ?, ill., states that Thwaytes bought it from Cookson for £100 in 1947.

Theodore Rousseau Jr. "Notes on Condition [at end of Ref. Mahon 1953]." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12 (October 1953), p. 45, ill. (detail), states that the painting was relined at least twice, and cut down slightly at the top and bottom, about two inches on the left side, and about one inch on the right.

Walter Friedlaender. Caravaggio Studies. Princeton, 1955, pp. xxiv, 81–82, 84, 101, 141, 145, 147–48, no. 5, pls. 5, 5A, 5B (overall and details), believes the figures were drawn from the artist's studies and observations of his own facial features and torso as reflected in a mirror, and that the fact that the boys are between sixteen and eighteen years of age indicates a date from the beginning of Caravaggio's career, about 1590; observes that if the wings of the figure on the far left were a part of the original composition, "the scene might be interpreted as an allegory of love and music with a Bacchic reference in the bunch of grapes".

Janina Michalkowa. "Une Musique Caravagesque." Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 2, no. 1 (1961), pp. 18–19, fig. 7, mentions it as one of several early works of Caravaggio that had a decisive influence on seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters working in Rome.

Alfred Moir. "'Boy with a Flute' by Bartolomeo Manfredi." Bulletin of the Art Division, Los Angeles County Museum 13, no. 1 (1961), pp. 7, 15 n. 9, fig. 6, describes it as painted in about 1595 for Cardinal del Monte; believes it was an inspiration for Manfredi's musical genre paintings, such as the Concert (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and the Boy with a Flute (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Costantino Baroni, ed. All the Paintings of Caravaggio. New York, 1962, pp. 9–10, 19, 27, pl. 9, dates it about 1590, but does not confirm its identification with the work painted for Cardinal del Monte; states without giving source that Caravaggio considered it the finest thing he ever did.

Silvino Borla. "Note e commenti, 1593: Arrivo del Caravaggio a Roma." Emporium 135 (January 1962), p. 16, believes Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1593 and, following the production of his early single-figure works, produced the MMA painting, the Hermitage Lute Player, the Kimbell Cardsharps, and the Fortune Teller (versions in the Louvre, Paris, and the Musei Capitolini, Rome), on a larger scale than his previous work, stimulated by the protection of Cardinal del Monte.

Ellis Waterhouse. Italian Baroque Painting. London, 1962, pp. 22–23, fig. 17, dates it about 1594–95, calling it Caravaggio's first commission for Del Monte and "an attempt to restate the poetic qualities of Giorgione's 'Concert champêtre' in terms of low life and with the tavern replacing the rural scene".

Silvino Borla. "Note e commenti: Opere milanesi del Caravaggio." Emporium 138 (October 1963), pp. 158–59, 161, ill., on the basis of style and the still adolescent self-portrait (he does not mention a specific figure), believes this picture was produced in Milan in about 1589–90 and that it was acquired by Del Monte in about 1595; also dates the Hermitage Lute Player to Caravaggio's Milanese period.

Duncan T. Kinkead. "Poesia e simboli nel Caravaggio: Temi religiosi." Palatino 10 (April–June 1966), p. 112, fig. 4, calls it a continuation of the Giorgionesque tradition of the Concert and compares it with Calisto Piazza's painting of a concert (Philadelphia Museum of Art), which Caravaggio may have known during his formative years in Lombardy.

Roberto Longhi. Caravaggio. Leipzig, 1968, pp. 15, 34, erroneously as in Washington; calls it a copy after an original which itself is not the work painted for Del Monte which he does think is probably a "counterpart" to the Kimbell Cardsharps.

Andrea Busiri Vici. I Poniatowski e Roma. Florence, 1971, pp. 330–31, 359 n. 34, fig. 151, identifies it with a 'bacchanalian concert' by Caravaggio that figured as no. 126 in the 1839 sale of Prince Stanislas Poniatowski [but see Ref. Haskell 1973]; dates it 1594–95 and suggests that it was purchased by the Prince in Rome.

Maurizio Calvesi. "Caravaggio o la ricerca della salvazione." Storia dell'arte 9/10 (1971), pp. 110–11, 141 [reprinted in "Il Caravaggio," Rome, 1987; revised and included in Maurizio Calvesi, "Le realtà del Caravaggio," Turin, 1990, pp. 26–27, 71 n. 55, fig. 27 (detail)], discusses what he views as the cabalistic, Trinitarian symbolism of this picture as it relates to the St. Petersburg Lute Player; observes that the figure at the far left had not only wings, but a quiver filled with arrows, and was thus originally intended as a Cupid.

W. Chandler Kirwin. "Addendum to Cardinal Francesco del Monte's Inventory: The Date of the Sale of Various Notable Paintings." Storia dell'arte 9/10 (1971), pp. 53, 55, publishes a record of the sale held in the Giardino di Ripetta between October 1627 and June 1628, at which a number of works from the Del Monte collection were sold, including the MMA painting, sold on May 8, 1628 by Alessandro del Monte.

Donald Posner. "Caravaggio's Homo-erotic Early Works." Art Quarterly 34 (Fall 1971), pp. 303–4, 306–8, 313, 320 nn. 6, 16, p. 321 n. 27, pp. 322–23 nn. 39, 41, 45, fig. 3, discussing the figures in the painting, notes that "with their soft mouths open in a show of desire and in their suggestive state of dress and undress, they clearly mean to tempt the spectator"; states that they wear everyday shirts, but in such a way as to suggest "all'antica" costumes; believes that with the heads, Caravaggio was aiming at a formal ideal, dismissing the notion that they are true self-portraits; observes that Paolini's Concert (Getty Museum, Los Angeles), which has a winged figure, depends on the MMA painting, and concludes that the wings on the figure at the upper left of the MMA picture are probably original, and were not painted out before the early seventeenth century; agrees with Friedländer's [see Ref. 1955] interpretation of this painting as an allegory of love and music, and dates it about 1596, after the Fruit Vendor (Galleria Borghese, Rome), and before the Hermitage Lute Player; observes that both the MMA painting and Hermitage Lute Player share the striking detail of a violin and bow at the front edge of the painting facing the viewer, an invitation to join in the making of "beautiful music," and, in context, a sexual solicitation.

Richard E. Spear. Caravaggio and His Followers. Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1971, pp. 3, 31, 69 n. 10, pp. 70–71, 136, 195, no. 15, ill., believes that the horn player is a more likely self-portrait than the lutenist; dates the picture about 1595 and mentions two known copies, one sold at Lepke's, Berlin, in 1901 [see Ref. Czobor 1955] and a second in a private collection, London, in the 1950s; notes that the figure at the upper left in the London picture included wings, quiver, and arrow.

Mina Gregori. "Caravaggio dopo la mostra di Cleveland." Paragone 23 (January 1972), pp. 43–44, observes that there is some doubt about the picture's authenticity, probably due to its state of preservation.

Benedict Nicolson. "Caravaggesques at Cleveland." Burlington Magazine 114 (February 1972), p. 113, describes it as "much damaged: its sickly appearance is to be put down solely to the battering it has suffered during its peregrinations from Cardinal del Monte's palazzo to Maules [sic] Meaburn".

Richard E. Spear. "Unknown Pictures by Caravaggisti (with Notes on 'Caravaggio and His Followers')." Storia dell'arte 14 (1972), p. 157, comments that Volpe's [see Ref. 1972] "insistence that the New York picture is a copy is based on a misrepresentation of the painting's bad condition".

Volker Scherliess. "Zu Caravaggios 'Musica'." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 17, no. 1 (1973), pp. 141–48, fig. 1, finds that the painting's condition makes it too difficult to determine its authenticity; reproduces the same copy as Volpe [see Ref. 1972] as formerly in a private collection, Florence; believes the wings of the figure at upper left, clearly visible in this copy, must have been present in Caravaggio's composition, and suggests that both our picture and the one formerly in Florence may be based on this lost original.

Arturo Bovi. Caravaggio. Florence, 1974, pp. 17, 148–49, ill.

Maurizio Marini. Io Michelangelo da Caravaggio. Rome, 1974, pp. 18, 20–22, 66 n. 133, pp. 331, 333, 337, 340, 342–46, 351, 358, 461, 468, 472, no. 8, ill. pp. 96–97 (overall and details), catalogues it as "Originale?"; comments on the unjustified covering of the wings and quiver, and believes that restoration gives a false impression of what remains of the original surface; calls the horn player probably a self-portrait; considers it unlikely that this and the Hermitage Lute Player were pendants.

Herwarth Röttgen. Il Caravaggio: Ricerche e interpretazioni. Rome, 1974, pp. 173, 183, 189–91, 198, pl. 92, includes it with works painted for Del Monte between 1595/96 and 1599; comments on the similarity of the features of the boy with the horn to those of Caravaggio in Ottavio Leoni's portrait drawing (Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence).

Eric Zafran inMaster Paintings from The Hermitage and The State Russian Museum, Leningrad. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975, pp. 26, 28, fig. 7, suggests that the Hermitage Lute Player and his counterpart in the MMA picture represent an actual youth in Cardinal del Monte's employ.

Mina Gregori. "Addendum to Caravaggio: The Cecconi 'Crowning with Thorns' Reconsidered." Burlington Magazine 118 (October 1976), p. 679, connects the archaistic quality of the general design with Venetian sources of the early Cinquecento.

Alfred Moir. Caravaggio and His Copyists. New York, 1976, pp. 84–85, 123 n. 183, no. 7, reproduces two copies, one sold as by Nicolo dell'Abate at Lepke's, Berlin, April 17, 1901 (fig. 17, no. 7a), and the other formerly in a private collection, London (fig 18, no. 7b); notes that no prints or drawings after it are known; identifies it as the picture sold at Christie's, June 20, 1834, no. 94, and suggests it may also have been no. 57 sold at Christie's, June 3, 1815 [see Notes].

Seymour Howard. "Identity Formation and Image Reference in the Narrative Sculpture of Bernini's Early Maturity: 'Hercules and Hydra' and 'Eros Triumphant'." Art Quarterly, n.s., 2, no. 2 (1979), pp. 161, 171 n. 69, fig. 33, relates it to an engraving of Eros triumphant with three Amors after Parmigianino, by an artist near the Master of the Die (fig. 15).

Howard Hibbard. Caravaggio. New York, 1983, p. 23 n. 5, pp. 31–33, 35, 37, 40, 46, 55–56, 87, 258, 264, 273–76, 278–82, 285, 287, 352, 363, no. 15, ill., observes that the violin and sheet music in the foreground probably belong to the musician at the right [but see Ref. Posner 1971]; notes that the model for the lutenist may have been Caravaggio's friend Mario Minniti; states that the picture was originally about the same size as the Kimbell Cardsharps and may have been commissioned as a pendant.

Maurizio Marini. "Al Metropolitan: Rimessi a nuovo i Musici di Caravaggio." Giornale dell'arte no. 2 (June 1983), p. ?, ill. (before and after treatment), comments on the recent restoration of this painting, mentioning that he provided a photograph of a copy in a Sienese private collection which was the basis for an understanding of the original during cleaning.

Franca Trinchieri Camiz and Agostino Ziino. "Caravaggio: Aspetti musicali e committenza." Studi musicali 12, no. 1 (1983), pp. 68–72, state that the musical notation is difficult to read in the original and observe that we cannot assume that what appears in copies would necessarily follow the original painting, as a case exists to the contrary with the Lute Player; comment on the verisimilitude of the instrumentation making up the four voices of the presumed polyphonic composition; state that the performers are shown in the moments which precede a musical entertainment, and that the lute player is tuning his lute.

Mina Gregori inThe Age of Caravaggio. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1985, pp. 228–35, no. 69, ill. pp. 230 (color), 231 (x-radiograph), 233 (stripped state), 235 (detail) [Italian ed., "Caravaggio e il suo tempo," Naples, 1985], traces the known history of the picture, which she identifies with the painting described by Baglione and owned by Cardinal del Monte; notes that the wings of Cupid were painted out by a later artist; calls it "an allegory translated into ideal terms" and relates the subject to the cultural interests of Del Monte; discusses the foreshortened objects in the picture and their relation to objects in other early works of the artist; dates it about 1595.

Giovanni Previtali. "Caravaggio e il suo tempo." Prospettiva no. 41 (April 1985), p. 79 n. 21, would not be surprised if some day a better version of this painting came to light.

H. Colin Slim. "Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers." Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward. Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 241–42 [repr. in "Painting Music in the Sixteenth Century: Essays in Iconography," Aldershot, 2002, pp. 241–42], observes that "the lack of any clear textual incipit prevents identification" of the music.

Carel van Tuyll. "New York and Naples: Caravaggio." Burlington Magazine 127 (July 1985), p. 487, fig. 70, comments on the recent restoration and notes the presence of a breeze blowing the music, hair, and clothing of the figures, possibly a clue to the picture's meaning.

Keith Christiansen. "Caravaggio and 'L'esempio davanti del naturale'." Art Bulletin 68 (September 1986), pp. 423–24, figs. 2, 3 (x-radiograph), imagines that Caravaggio used the same model for the cupid and the singer, "posing each figure according to a loosely predetermined scheme"; does not mention this picture among those with incised lines in their surface, a technique which he feels the artist did not begin to use until about the time of the Bacchus (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence).

Lizzie Boubli. Letter to Keith Christiansen. March 15, 1988, states that the inscription (formerly in the lower left corner) was similar to that in another painting that belonged to Créquy: Veronese's "Supper at Emmaus" (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Jean-Claude Boyer and Isabelle Volf. "Rome à Paris: Les tableaux du maréchal de Créquy (1638)." Revue de l'art no. 79 (1988), pp. 23, 31, 39 n. 98, fig. 16, identify this painting with "une musique du Caravage peincte sur bois . . . " that appeared as no. CXIX in the inventory of the collection of Charles de Créquy in May 1638 [see Ref. Charles I 1638]; note that Simon Vouet, who knew Del Monte and possibly his collection in Rome, inventoried the painting in 1643 when it was in the collection of Cardinal de Richelieu; add that the picture was also inventoried in the collection of the duchesse d'Aiguillon in 1675 as no. 48, "Un aut tableau peint sur toille cole sur bois ft par Miquelange Caravage representant une simphonie . . . "; observe that the description of the picture as "sur bois" and "sur toille cole sur bois" in the Richelieu and Aiguillon inventories confirms Denis Mahon's hypothesis that it was transferred to a new surface early in its history; state that although we know that Créquy received gifts in Rome, it is not clear that he acquired the painting in that way.

Franca Trinchieri Camiz. "La 'Musica' nei quadri del Caravaggio." Quaderni di Palazzo Venezia 6 (1989), pp. 198, 200, 203, fig. 87, notes that similar classicizing garments are worn by male performers in the engraving "Allegoria della Musica" by Cornelis Cort (1533–1578, active in Rome), and suggests that this may have been a model for Caravaggio; observes in a painting of "Musica" by Marten de Vos (1532–1605; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels) a juxtaposition of the realistic and mythological similar to that in the MMA picture.

Denis Mahon. "The Singing 'Lute-Player' by Caravaggio from the Barberini Collection, Painted for Cardinal Del Monte." Burlington Magazine 132 (January 1990), p. 12 n. 61, p. 19, believes that it was acquired by Cardinal Antonio Barberini after the sale of 1628 and given by him to the duc de Créquy in 1634.

Keith Christiansen. A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1990, pp. 11, 23–28, 32, 41–42, 44–45, 51 n. 38, pp. 57–60, 68, 72, no. 3, figs. 8, 9 (in color, overall and detail), ill. p. 57 (black and white), calls it "an allegory of Music and Love . . . conceived in a naturalistic background"; considers it likely that the cornetto player is a self-portrait and suggests that the lutenist is also a specific individual in Del Monte's household; states that, according to a 1634 report, Cardinal Antonio Barberini gave the painting to Créquy, and that he had bought it from the "Vigna Ludovisi" (Del Monte's casino near the Porta Pinciana, which he sold to Cardinal Ludovisi in 1621).

Ferdinando Bologna. L'incredulità del Caravaggio e l'esperienza delle "cose naturali". Turin, 1992, pp. 300–301, 305, 464 n. 55, no. 8, does not believe it was the painting made for Cardinal del Monte, calling it a copy after an early work by Caravaggio.

Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588–1619: Catalogue Raisonné. Amsterdam, 2007, pp. 50, 199–200, fig. 61, believe it likely that Ter Brugghen had this picture in mind when he painted the "Musical Group" of about 1627 (National Gallery, London), noting that both works "utilize the same three means of music making: voice, strings and woodwind".

Clovis Whitfield. "The 'camerino' of Cardinal Del Monte." Paragone 59 (January 2008), p. 31, notes that "the model for the 'Lute player' is the same as the singer who posed twice for the Metropolitan 'Musicians'".

Andrew Graham-Dixon. Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. New York, 2011, pp. 124–27, 131–32, 144, pl. 21, believes that the same model posed for the Cupid in this picture and the angel in "Saint Francis in Ecstasy" of about 1595–96 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford).

There are three known copies of this painting. One was sold at Lepke's, Berlin, April 17, 1901, lot 74, as by Nicolo dell'Abate, and came from the Valdrighi Gallery, Modena (Moir 1976, fig. 17). A second copy was in a private collection, London, in 1955, when it was exhibited at the Chelsea Antique Fair (Moir 1976, fig. 18). Volpe (1972) and Scherliess (1973) illustrate this same copy as formerly in a private collection, Florence. A photograph of a third copy (private collection, Siena) was referred to during the restoration of the MMA painting in 1983 (Marini 1983).

The inscription formerly visible at lower left, [MI]CHELANG[ELO].DA CARAVA / [G]GIO, was a later addition, possibly from the end of the seventeenth century or beginning of the eighteenth century.